


Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

by Lost_In_The_Muse



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: 2000s internet, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, BAMF kyoko, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Different Guardians, Drabbles, Emotional Roller Coaster, Ghosts, Humor, Kyoko is the Sun Guardian, Memes, Necromancy, Original Character-centric, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Panic Attacks, Rarepair, Realistic, Sasagawa Kyouko-centric, Self-Insert, Social Media, Strong Female Characters, Therapy, Time Travel, Unconventional Uses for Dying Will Flames, Undead, Vines, Will eventually have more tags, Work In Progress, but it will be in there in the far future, characters get the therapy that they need, comedy with lots of angst, more serious than it intended to be, oc self insert - Freeform, romance isn't really the focus of the story, she can also use her flames to raise an undead army
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:17:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_In_The_Muse/pseuds/Lost_In_The_Muse
Summary: Kyoko discovers two things after a time-traveling ghost starts to haunt her.One, therapy is her best friend. And two, Sun Flames are really great for necromancy.A grittier OC Self-Insert.





	1. Here, The Dead Whisper

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to begin with a disclaimer. I do not own Katekyō Hitman Reborn! In any way, shape, or form. This is fan work, that is in no way connected to the franchise and I am not profiting off of this fanfiction in any way. The title of this fanfiction “Do I Dare Disturb the Universe” is a line taken from T.S. Eliot’s Poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock however this poem is in the Public Domain and therefore not subjected to copywrite laws. Any character, song, or rhyme that is recognizable to the audience is not owned by me. However there will be several OCs in this fanfic that I do own, but again, I’m not making any money off of this.

**01.**

Sasagawa Kyoko woke up on her tenth birthday feeling like something was amiss.

At first, she thought that it was because she couldn’t hear her brother yelling as he ran around the house. But with one look at the alarm clock, she realized that he must have gone off on his early morning run already. She had overslept.

Which made sense, considering it was a family policy that if someone in the Sasagawa household had a birthday they were allowed to sleep in for as long as they wanted. Meaning that the rest of the household's occupants had to be as quiet as they possibly could, and that included Ryohei.

And then Kyoko thought that it was just the sensation of finally reaching the double digits. She was  _ ten years old _ now. She had lived for an  _ entire decade _ already, and it blew her mind to think that she was that old already.

The little brunette let a breathless smile cross her face as she stared up at the ceiling. That must have been it. This feeling inside her must be what growing up feels like.

And with that in mind, Kyoko sat up in her bed, arched her back in a stretch, and swung her legs around to the side of the bed and hopped down-

-only to immediately scramble back onto the bed when she discovered that not only did her floor suddenly turn  _ squishy _ overnight, but it made a  _ squelchy noise _ too when she stepped on it.

Her eyes shot down to the floor and she screamed.

 

* * *

****

**02.**

The bedroom door slammed open, and Kyoko’s parents burst into the room.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Kyoko’s father asks, his eyes wild and apron disheveled. He must have been working in the kitchen, making a delicious homemade red velvet cake for his daughter.

Kyoko couldn’t find her voice, instead, she raised a shaky hand and pointed at the person that lay sprawled out on the hardwood floors beside her bed.

“Kyoko! Are you ok?” Her mother asked, lowering the fireplace poker that she had brandished like a weapon.

The ten-year-old spent a few brief moments working her jaw, trying to force herself to speak before finally she managed to stutter out a weak “Th-the there’s a pers- person.”

Her mother and father scanned the room, their eyes furrowing in confusion- like they were trying to solve some sort of puzzle.

“Sweetie,” Kyoko’s father said as he crossed the room. Kyoko watched in absolute  _ horror _ as he walked through the person on the ground as if he didn’t even notice the unconscious -maybe even dead- stranger. “There’s no one here.”

Kyoko was dumbfounded, and suddenly her words came back to her.

“What do you mean there’s no one there,  _ you’re standing in her! _ ” she shrieked as she scrambled away from the edge of her bed, pressing her back up against the wall.

Her parents exchanged concerned glances.

 

* * *

 

****

**03.**

Ryohei knew that he wasn’t the most observant person in the world. He was well aware that he had a tendency to rush into things without thinking them through, and he had to admit he was sometimes oblivious to other people’s feelings.

His little sister often called him a true Gryffindor because of it- like the main characters from that book series that she had recently gotten into and was trying to get him into it as well.

There were only three books in the series so far and yet Kyoko had already read each one of them four times and even managed to get a hold of an English version of each copy. The fourth book -Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire- wasn’t due to be released until July, but Ryohei heard his parents talking about getting an English version as a late birthday gift for Kyoko.

Reading those fantasy books always made his little sister so happy, even if she couldn’t read the original English editions without constantly using an English to Japanese dictionary.

And right at that moment, Ryohei wanted to run upstairs and grab every single one of her Harry Potter books and give them to her. Maybe then she wouldn’t look so sad.

Ryohei wasn’t sure what happened that morning after he left for his morning jog - _ quietly!  _ Because he didn’t want to wake up the birthday girl!- but when he returned he immediately knew that something was wrong.

Kyoko was drinking glass after glass of water in the kitchen while tears flowed freely from her eyes. Their parents hovered around her, alternating between showering the ten-year-old with reassuring words and shooting each other worried glances and whispers.

Ryohei’s heart shattered into a million pieces to see his sister in a state like that. And that heartbreak morphed into righteous anger when Kyoko cried out that there was a  _ stranger in her room. _

Fury gripped him like no other, and Ryohei stormed up the stairs- screaming at the top of his lungs how he was going to beat up whoever dared make his little baby sister cry.

He barely heard his parents shouting as he smashed the half-open door into the wall -almost breaking it right off its hinges- and started flipping furniture in an attempt to find the evil person responsible for making Kyoko cry.

“Ryohei, stop!” His mother yelled as she lunged for him, restraining his flailing arms with a monstrous bear hug. “Ryohei!”

The eleven-year-old struggled for a few moments longer, trying to escape his mother’s grasp to continue upheaving his sister's room to find the person who made her cry. But the harder he tried to escape, the tighter his mother’s hug became.

Finally, Ryohei stopped moving. And he noticed.

Other than his mother and him, there wasn’t a single soul in Kyoko’s room.

 

* * *

****

**04.**

She could remember the unassuming calm. The quiet before the firestorm hit.

Then heat and flames enveloped the night.

There was a loud pop. Like the cork of a bottle of champagne being popped open. Or maybe like the sound of an artillery cannon firing.

The lights were too bright to be real.

And yet, the colors around her were dull. Faded to unremarkable shades of black grey and white.

She was tired. All she wanted to do was sleep.

Just to turn off the world for one blissful moment.

Tiny pinprick stars swirled around in her vision like chunks of unmashed bananas in a poorly made fruit smoothie.

It was too much to look at.

The shifting shapes were still there, oozing and lurching even with her eyes closed.

Did she succumb to the nothingness?

Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. But the nothingness surrounded her. Confusing her. Nothing meant no danger. No reason for fear. But nothing also meant no safety. It was nothing. Nothing at all.

And right then?

Right then she felt the nothingness. She breathed the nothingness. She smelled the nothingness. She tasted the nothingness. She was the nothingness.

It became difficult to tie the strings of her thoughts together. Stray questions, answers, comments, monologues fluttered by in a heavy fog of exhaustion.

That was when the panic set in.

Because how can you not panic when you become the nothingness that suffocates you?

She struggled. Squirmed. Tried to push herself away from the void of nothing. But she didn't call it the void of nothing for nothing. No matter which direction she turned there was nothing, and no one.

She screamed for help.

Is anyone there? Help me, please! I don't know where I am! Hello? Where am I? What happened?

...Please. I'm scared…

There was no answer.

 

* * *

 

**05.**

Kyoko sat quietly at, numbly nibbling on forkfuls of cake as she listened to Ryohei yell about how he was extremely happy that she liked his present. It was a pair of hot pink rollerblades complete with a matching helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and wrist guards. Ryohei wanted his little sister to be safe when she was out exercising.

And although Kyoko truly did appreciate the gift her brother had spent so much of his own personal allowance to buy, she couldn’t put her heart into the celebrations.

Not when her parents were busy murmuring to themselves when they think she isn’t looking.

Not when Ryohei’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Not when Kyoko was hyper-aware of the fact that the stranger was still in her room, with shredded, blood-soaked clothes.

The woman that no one else but Kyoko could see had been there for more than four hours. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound, and she wasn’t-

She wasn’t even  _ breathing. _

And Kyoko had double checked the pulse in her wrist like she saw people do on those crime shows that her father watches late at night. There was no beat in the woman’s vains. None at all. 

Maybe she wasn’t doing it properly, or maybe the woman was just breathing so slowly, Kyoko couldn’t see if her chest was rising and falling as it should. Heck, maybe everyone was right and she really was hallucinating or dreaming or whatever.

But the heaviness of the stranger's arms when Kyoko lifted it… The course and frizziness of the hair when she prodded the head… the wet, red liquid that rubbed off on her finger…

Kyoko knew that there was a dead body in her room. Wave upon wave of guilt threatened to sweep her off of her feet and drown her.

She should have called for an ambulance. She shouldn’t have listened to her parents when they told her that there was no one else in her bedroom. That there was no strange woman lying face down on the ground dying while Kyoko was too busy crying hysterically to be of any use.

A woman was  _ dead _ , and Kyoko felt like that was her fault.

 

* * *

****

**06.**

Kyoko’s father ended up taking her to see a doctor bright and early the next day instead of letting her go to school with Ryohei.

A full  _ twenty-four hours _ since the stranger appeared in her room.

The doctors did a bunch of tests that blurred together. Putting Kyoko into machines, checking for a concussion, making sure there was nothing else wrong with her.

Kyoko couldn’t remember much about it. The image of the dead body plagued her every move.

She tried to explain it to the others, she really did. Kyoko at least wanted to give the nameless person a funeral. She may not have known who the woman was, but everyone deserves a proper burial. 

Her pediatrician referred her to a therapist. The first session was on Tuesday of next week.

Kyoko came home exhausted and well aware that  _ nothing had changed. _ The stranger was still there, and Kyoko numbly accepted the fact that the body was there to stay. She wasn’t going to get any help from her family in that respect.

So with a whimper of resignation, Kyoko told her father that she was going upstairs to take a nap in Ryohei’s room. He nodded and told her that he would be in his office if she needed anything.

Kyoko quietly trodden up the stairs, bypassed Ryohei’s half-open door after a brief moment of hesitation, and stood in front of her own closed bedroom door.

She stared at it, her mind blank, and her eyes unseeing.

Then she reached out and turned the knob.

It had been a full twenty-four hours, and the dead body was still  _ there _ .

 

* * *

 

 

**07.**

Kyoko learned how to live around the body.

She didn’t know what to do those first few days- hovering around outside her room, too scared to go in but too morbidly curious to leave it alone.

Eventually, Kyoko gathered up all of the courage she could muster, and in the dead of night, she  _ dragged _ the body outside to the old tool shed in her backyard.

It was a lot more difficult than Kyoko anticipated. She was just a little girl who hadn’t spent a lot of time playing sports or working out. That was more her brother’s forte. Kyoko couldn’t pick up an adult woman by herself, and she was too nervous to go to her parents or brother for help.

It wasn’t like they could see the woman anyway.

So Kyoko buckled down and pulled the woman out of the house by her legs. It took her a solid hour to finish the job. And all throughout, Kyoko felt a constant urge to look over her shoulder. To make sure that she was alone. To make sure that no one was watching her stash away a body.

She placed the woman in the middle of the shed, surrounded by gardening tools and various sports equipment like some sort of shrine.

Then, Kyoko turned around and pulled a bouquet of newly bloomed wildflowers she had picked from the schoolyard out from behind the lawnmower. Carefully, she maneuvered the woman’s hands to her chest and Kyoko placed the flowers between the fingers.

She took a step back. Moonlight filtered through the cracks of the shed’s roof, casting ethereal shadows across the stranger’s body.

Kyoko thought the woman looked almost like a ghost in the pale glow of the night.

* * *

 

 

**08.**

One week turned into two weeks, and two weeks turned into three.

Kyoko visited the shed twice a day to say a prayer. Once before school, and once as soon as she returned home.

In all that time, the body didn’t change one bit. It was still in the same position she put it in that night when she moved the woman out of her room. Kyoko thought that dead bodies were supposed to start to stink by now and decay.

At least, that was the reasoning her parents gave her as to why they had to get rid of her pet hamster that died three years ago.

It was as if the body was frozen in time. The blood on her clothes retained its bright red hue, her dark brown skin didn’t seem to sag or wrinkle, and at a certain angle, the woman looked like she was simply asleep.

But the woman’s heart wasn’t beating. Her chest didn’t rise, nor did it fall.

Kyoko put a mirror up to the woman's mouth to see if any condensation formed from the woman’s breath -another technique the ten-year-old picked up on from her father’s TV shows- but no fog formed on the reflective surface.

Eventually, Kyoko gave up.

Eventually, Kyoko stopped talking about the dead body that showed up in her room on her birthday and now occupied the Sasagawa family’s barely used tool shed.

Eventually, her therapists decided that her mad ramblings were a one-off thing and let her go with a stern warning that as soon as she felt like something was wrong, she should come right back.

Eventually, things went back to normal.

And Kyoko was happy. Or at least, as happy as she could be given the circomstances. 

Until she woke up in the middle of the night -12:01AM on March 31 to be exact- to the sound of someone screaming in the backyard.

 

* * *

****

**09.**

“She’s alive,” Kyoko whispered, too scared to raise her voice. “Oh God,  _ she’s alive _ !”

The ten-year-old peaked through one of the broken windows of the shed. Through the spiderweb cracks of the glass, Kyoko watched with a mix of morbid curiosity and horror as the body seized and spazzed as if the person was desperately trying and failing to wake themselves up from a nightmare.

The person suddenly lurched forward into an upright sitting position. The sheer unexpectedness of the movement caused Kyoko to flinch away from the window and she crouched under the window pane to hide from the undead woman’s sight.

A beat passed, and then Kyoko’s hearing was assaulted by a blood-curdling scream. The kind that sent waves of ice down your spine. The kind that grips your heart with frostbitten hands. It was the kind of scream that soon-to-be-murdered victims release in a last ditch effort to find someone who could save them.

Kyoko had never heard such a gut-wrenching sound before. It made her freeze in her place and her mind went completely blank. As if her brain couldn’t comprehend what was going on around her.

It was only the intense urge to make sure that the woman was alright that Kyoko tilted herself forward onto the balls of her feet and slid her way over the shed’s door.

Carefully, as if the door handle could potentially bite her hand off, Kyoko pulled open the door and stuck her head in.

The woman was sitting there, raggedly gasping for air and staring down at her hands as if they were some sort of foreign entity. At least the woman wasn’t screaming anymore. This was an improvement.

Kyoko pushed the door open a little further, and the movement -or maybe the noise- must have caught the woman’s attention because the woman’s mud brown eyes snapped up to meet Kyoko’s.

The ten-year-old felt a fluster of fear brew in her stomach before she forced it to the back of her mind.

Kyoko took a deep breath.

“Are you al- are you ok, m-miss? I um, I can call another adult if- if you want, you’ve been kinda, um… dead?” Kyoko said in a shakey and uncertain voice. She had no idea what she was supposed to do in a situation like this.

The woman only blinked her eyes before looking away.

Kyoko squirmed, and just as she was about to say something else, the woman spoke in a language Kyoko only ever heard spoken in movies and in the occasional song played on the radio.

_ “What the hell happened to me?” _ The woman murmured under her breath in English.

 

* * *

****

**10.**

She missed yellow.

It was such a soft color, always warm and welcoming. Like a giant flower that would pull you into a protective hug.

It was the color of the sun, the color of happiness, the color of the.... what were they called? Starts with a 'G'

The boots you wear to keep your feet from getting wet

_ Galoshes! _ That's the word!

Or she guessed it would be just easier if she called them rain boots

Rain boots were yellow

Maybe she could become yellow.

Be never ending. Everyone would know what she was

Never alone.

She was thinking again.

Thinking is dangerous.

If you lose yourself too far into the sea of thoughts, you may not come out alive

But what does it matter? She wasn’t even alive in the first place.

_ Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? _

__ _ Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full! _

__ _ One for the master, _

__ _ One for the dame, _

__ _ And one for the little boy _

__ _ Who lives down the lane _

__ _ Baa, baa, black sheep, _

__ _ Have you any wool? _

__ _ Yes sir, yes sir, _

__ _ Three bags full... _

Oxygen suddenly exploded into her lungs. She gasped and coughed and scratched at her throat. The nothingness disappeared and in its place, vibrant colors and clearly defined shapes emerged.

It hurt. It hurt it hurtithurtithurt so goddamn much, she screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

She managed to take a deep breath through the haze of terror and confusion. And then another. And then another.

Then finally, she was able to catch her breath. She looked down at her hands, stretching her fingers out as far as she could. There were flowers in her lap. Illuminous blue forget-me-nots, scattered and in disarray.

The nothingness was gone. In its place stood metal, wood, and the face of a little girl peeking out behind a door.

She did nothing. Only watching as the little girl pushed the door open and began saying something. Something that she couldn’t understand.

And when the little girl stopped talking, she looked back down at the flowers in her lap.

_ “What the hell happened to me?” _


	2. Here, Death Groans

**11.**

The language barrier was an issue.

    Kyoko snuck back into her room under the cover of the night. Occasionally glancing back to make sure that the woman was following her.

    The dead woman -although Kyoko really couldn’t call her _dead_ exactly- quietly trailed along behind her.

    Kyoko flicked her floor lamp on and rummaged around her bookshelf until she found her trusty English-to-Japanese dictionary. She pushed aside some papers to the side and plopped the dictionary on her desk.

    She opened it up to a random page, shifted around in her seat so that the woman could get a better view of the book.

    _“Point,”_ Kyoko said in badly accented English.

    The woman blinked, bringing her eyebrows together in confusion.

    Kyoko suddenly felt very awkward. Did she say that correctly? She must not have.

    _“Point”_ she repeated herself, doing her best to enunciate the word correctly _“Point word”_

    She pointed to the dictionary herself. Maybe charades would be easier? Talking in English was hard.

    It took a couple more moments, but a lightbulb suddenly seemed to switch on in the woman’s head and she nodded. The woman pulled herself closer to the desk and reached over to flip the pages of the dictionary-

    -only for her hand to slip right through the book and deep into the desk.

    The woman froze stiff and Kyoko flinched.

    After a few tense moments the woman ripped her hand away like she had accidently touched a boiling tea kettle.

    _“Ummmmmm”_ Kyoko raked her mind trying to figure out how to salvage the situation, _“I turn. You point.”_

Kyoko then turned to the first page of the dictionary, allowed the woman to read down the list, and then Kyoko flipped to the next page.

    They fell into a rhythm. The woman would skim through and point at an English word, then Kyoko would scramble to copy down the Japanese translation.

    Am I dead?

    Kyoko stared at the characters she’d written on the page. She glanced back up at the woman who looked just as uncomfortable with the situation as Kyoko felt.

    In truth? Kyoko didn’t know how to answer that question. Maybe up until half an hour ago she would have said yes. The woman was very much so dead. She was dead to Kyoko and nonexistent to the rest of the world.

    But now?... Maybe?...

    _“You,”_ Kyoko said slowly as she pointed at the woman _“In”_ she pointed down at the floor _“Namimori, Japan.”_

    Kyoko wondered if the woman noticed that Kyoko didn’t actually answer her question. But the woman stiffened considerably.

    _“Japan?_ ” she parroted _“Japan?”_

    Kyoko could only nod.

 

* * *

 

****

**12.**

    She felt her entire world falling to pieces around her. And yet, she felt a strange sort of calm.

    The tell-tale signs of her entering a panic attack were strangely absent.

    Her breathing wasn’t shallow. Her limbs weren’t trembling. Her vision wasn’t clouding over with prickly white dots. She wasn’t light-headed, and her heart wasn’t racing either.

    In fact-

    She placed her hand over her chest.

    -Her heart wasn’t beating at all.

    Then she realized her lungs were still as bricks. She wasn’t breathing.

    And that realization caused a whole new wave of panic to crash over her head. In the midst of the buzzing in her brain she forced her chest to expand and contract and tried to will her heart to beat.

    It was _hard._

    Consciously breathing. Consciously trying and failing to make her heart pump blood.

    She felt like she was drowning. Drowning on air. There’s not enough, there’s too much.

    Too much too much toomuch toomuchtoomuch _toomuchtoomuch-_

    _“Kyoko!”_ The little girl exclaimed, cutting through her whirling thoughts.

    Right, there was someone else here. A kid.

    She couldn’t do this in front of a kid. She had to keep herself together.

    _“Huh?”_ She asked.

    _“My name is Kyoko!”_ The little girl carefully said in English.

    Kyoko. The little girl’s name was Kyoko.

Her pronunciation needed some work, but she said the foreign phrase very well. She was impressed.

She took a deep breath and felt a pang in her when her lungs didn’t automatically move to take the next one.

_“I am Neeki.”_

 

* * *

****

**13.**

    Mrs. Sasagawa stared down at her mug of jasmine tea. She swirled it around and watched the tea leaves slowly spin around at the bottom.

    “We need to do something.” she suddenly said, breaking through the tense silence. “We can’t leave things the way they are.”

    She peeked up at her husband.

    Mr. Sasagawa sat at the desk in the corner of their bedroom. His elbows propped up on the table and his head buried in his hands. He looked up when he heard his wife speak.

    The dim lighting illuminated the purple bags under his eyes and highlighted his disheveled brown hair.

    “I…” his voice trailed off as he gathered his bearings, “I thought she was better.” he murmured.

Mrs. Sasagawa eyes filled with sorrow, “I did too.” she said, almost to quietly for Mr. Sasagawa to hear. “But she’s not and I think she’s getting worse. Or maybe it’s always been like this and we’ve just never noticed.”

Mr. Sasagawa groaned and hid his face in the palms of his hands again. “No one ever notices. No one ever notices these kinds of things- But Kyoko’s our _daughter!_ We should have noticed it!”

“I know we should have!” Mrs. Sasagawa exploded, “But we didn’t and that’s not going to change no matter how much you want it to!”

The silence returned with a touch of uncomfortable awkwardness to accompany it.

And then Mr. Sasagawa let out a shaky breath. “Where did we go wrong, Haruka? We knew that Kyoko doesn’t like making people upset. She must have been bottling up all of her emotions-”

“-Until she exploded,” Mrs. Sasagawa finished. “And you know what? I don’t care anymore about the gossipers. Screw the stigma, we’re going to send Kyoko to a proper therapist. Not whoever that asshat Dr. Sato referred her to.”

    “... you’re right. You’re right- you’re always right.” Mr. Sasagawa muttered before standing up. “I’m going to start making some calls.”

 

* * *

****

**14.**

    At this point, Neeki was almost certain that she was a ghost.

    She could fly, she could walk through walls. She wasn’t transparent though and Kyoko reaffirmed that fact. But no one else could see her, and if Neeki pinched herself it wouldn’t hurt.

    Neeki was half convinced that she was in a coma. That this was just a prolonged hallucination.

One minute she was a high school senior, sorting through acceptance and rejection letters just trying to figure out what she was going to do in the coming fall, and then the next she was on the other side of the world, invisible to everyone except for a traumatized elementary schooler.

    Neeki felt bad. She felt really bad about the stress she put Kyoko under. She wished she’d been more put together and acted somewhat saner when she woke up. Kyoko shouldn’t have had to deal with all of this.

    So Neeki did the only thing she could think of. She restrained herself. She tied herself down to the house and point blank refused to leave the property.

    That way Kyoko wouldn’t have a weird-ass ghost hanging around her twenty-four seven. She could go and hang out with her friends without Neeki there looking over her shoulder.

    If Kyoko wanted to be alone in the house, then Neeki would simply float up to the attic and stare at the insulation for a couple of hours

    And when Kyoko and her older brother left for school, and when the elder Sasagawas left for work, Neeki alternated between hanging out in the tool shed she’d woken up in, and Kyoko’s room.

    Left alone with her thoughts.

    Honestly, that was the _real_ tragedy right there.

    The ghost live wasn’t too bad all things considered. She didn’t have to eat, she didn’t have to sleep, and hey she didn’t have to pay rent either so that was a plus.

    But it was weird too. She could walk around the Sasagawa household and nobody would look her way. Neeki would walk up to Mr. Sasagawa while he’s cooking, waver her arms around in front of him and loudly ask if he was making chicken strips, and the man would just… Not respond.

    She’d also taken to following Kyoko’s mother on occasion when she stays to work from home. She never even looks Neeki’s way.

    Neeki considered following Kyoko to school, or just going out to explore the town herself. Maybe she’d run into someone else who could see her. Maybe she’d run into other ghosts?

    But every morning when Kyoko asked in her broken English if Neeki would like to come with her, Neeki would hesitate.

    Because the fact of the matter still hadn’t changed.

    She was scared.

 

* * *

 

 

**15.**

    It was Tuesday. Tuesday meant therapy day.

    At first, Kyoko thought that therapy would stop after the therapist that her pediatrician recommended released her after two sessions, but her parents had a different idea.

    Kyoko didn’t know the details but what she did know was that her parents got into a fight with that therapist after he said that her breakdown was just an attempt to get attention, and they severed all ties with him. Then Kyoko’s parents took it upon themselves to find a therapist that was right for Kyoko.

    They called and interviewed two other therapists in the area before settling on Han Seo-Yun. A Clinical Psychologist from Korea who set up a practice in the next town over from Namimori.

    While the sessions with the first therapist were covered by her family’s health insurance, the sessions with Dr. Han weren’t. But Kyoko’s parent’s told her not to worry, her mental health was worth it.

    And so, Kyoko restarted her therapy sessions. Every Tuesday after school her father would drive her all the way to Nakahoro. Kyoko would arrive anywhere from five to ten minutes early to her appointment depending on traffic, she’d say hello to the receptionist, and then when her name was called she would leave her father in the waiting room and enter Dr. Han’s room.

    Kyoko liked Dr. Han. She was much better than that first therapist who treated Kyoko like some attention seeking five-year-old. And Kyoko never personally met with the other therapists that her parents were considering, so Kyoko really couldn’t form an opinion on them.

    But the best thing about Dr. Han?

    She didn’t immediately dismiss Kyoko when she said that a ghost was living with her. Dr. Han listened. She actually listened! As much as Kyoko loved her family, not even they were entirely comfortable when she brought up Neeki.

    Things were different with Dr. Han. Kyoko could spend an entire session talking about the weird undead thing going on with Neeki and Dr. Han would even offer suggestions to help figure out what was happening!

    Kyoko was so incredibly grateful that she had a place where she could ramble all she wanted. It was nice.

 

* * *

****

**16.**

    “ _No no no, again. Repeat_. In the great green room” Kyoko read aloud as she traced her finger under each character.

    “In the gra-gre-” Neeki repeated, attempting to force her tongue to produce the appropriate sound. She tried for a couple more moments before looking down at Kyoko helplessly.

    “In the great green room,” Kyoko prompted again, although this time slower.

    “In the grate gren room” Neeki said, wincing as she butchered the pronunciation.

    _“That was good!”_ Kyoko said with a warm smile, _“Your Japanese is improvement.”_

    Neeki laughed awkwardly, _“You can speak English better than I can speak Japanese”_

    Kyoko hummed, _“You need to practice. Practice makes perfect.”_

    Neeki didn’t expect that learning Japanese was going to be easy. Learning Spanish certainly wasn’t easy but Neeki had the benefit of taking Spanish classes since she was in first grade. With Japanese, she was diving head first into the language with only a ten-year-old girl as her guide.

    To be frank, Neeki was incredibly impressed with how well Kyoko could speak English for someone who’s only interactions with the language was through the Harry Potter franchise. And even in the short month, they had known each other, Kyoko was picking up more and more vocabulary and grammar rules by simply talking to Neeki.

    Neeki didn’t doubt for one second that if she kept this up, Kyoko would be fluent in English within a couple of years.

    Which was why Neeki asked Kyoko to help her learn Japanese. If Kyoko was going to learn English to better communicate with her, then Neeki was going to learn Japanese to communicate better with Kyoko.

    Neeki stared at the page with concentration.

    “In the great green room

    There was a telephone

    And a red balloon…”

 

* * *

****

**17.**

    Sasagawa Kyoko was one of Seo-Yun’s more interesting clients. Kyoko was a bright, bubbly, and friendly girl who’s laughter was simply infectious. Anyone would be lucky to know such a wonderful little girl like her.

    Which was why it hurt Seo-Yun, even more, to see Kyoko in her office.

    She knew about Kyoko’s history. The incident involving Ryohei’s classmates. The breakdowns that followed. The anxiety that developed. Everything that led up to Kyoko’s meltdown on her tenth birthday.

    When she got the first reports, Seo-Yun thought that the “body” Kyoko constantly said that she saw was going to be a much bigger problem. She had several ideas as to why Kyoko was seeing it.

    Perhaps it was Kyoko’s mind trying to find something to focus on and distract itself from reliving the trauma. Perhaps it was Kyoko’s way of trying to communicate that she still wasn’t alright. A reflection of her own emotions.

But the moment Kyoko stepped foot into her practice, all of Sea-Yun’s preconceptions evaporated.

For one thing, the notes she had received from Kyoko’s pediatrician were no longer accurate. It seemed that at some point between the last time Kyoko saw her doctor and when she came to Seo-Yun, the “body” gained a name and a background.

Neeki Dabiri was a curious construction of Kyoko’s mind.

From what Seo-Yun could gather, Neeki was an Iranian-American who had spent her entire life in the United States, (hence her first name being given before her surname as opposed to the other way around) and before she suddenly “appeared” before Kyoko, Neeki was just an average eighteen-year-old high schooler living in Upstate New York with her parents and her dog.

The level of detail Kyoko could describe Neeki was astounding as well. If Seo-Yun didn’t know any better, she would have believed that Neeki was an actual person.

And Kyoko seemed to be reacting positively to any curiosity Seo-Yun displayed about Neeki.

So for now, Seo-Yun wouldn’t try to convince Kyoko that Neeki wasn’t real.

For now, Seo-Yun was going to wait and observe until she had a better read on the situation.

 

* * *

 

**18.**

    Kyoko stared at the empty plastic cup on the table.

    _“Try again! Try again!”_ she encouraged, waving her hand at the cup.

    Neeki only offered a frustrated grunt in response.

    After Neeki’s semi-resurrection -semi because Kyoko was still the only person that could see her- it became apparent that invisibility wasn’t the only ghost-like ability Neeki had.

Neeki would walk straight through walls as if they weren’t even there, she couldn’t solidly set her feet down on the floorboards and instead hovered a couple of centimeters above the ground, and her hand would just pass right on through any object.

The only person who could see, hear, and touch Neeki was Kyoko, and the only things Neeki could interact with were the blood-soaked clothes on her back that seem to never dry, and the strange rectangular object Neeki had in one of her jeans back pockets.

Neeki called it a phone -and she very nearly started to cry tears of joy when she turned it on- but it didn’t look like any phone Kyoko had ever seen before.

Kyoko didn’t quite get why that was important since Neeki probably couldn’t call anyone since she was still was in ghost form, but Kyoko didn’t pry. Neeki deserved a little bit of happiness and Kyoko didn’t want to ruin it.

But the whole incorporeal aspect of being a ghost was a problem that both Kyoko and Neeki wanted to be solved.

Kyoko brought up the issue with Miss. Han and the Korean woman suggested that they do small and quick exercises. Miss. Han theorized that if Neeki practiced picking something small up for at least fifteen minutes a day, she may find a way to interact with the rest of the world through experimentation.

Of course, neither Neeki nor Kyoko would sure if that would actually work but it was the only idea they had.

Hence the cup.

 _“Aaaaaaah It’s exhausting. It’s like I’m trying to run a marathon with only my arm”_ Neeki said as she stared down the piece of plastic.

Kyoko furrowed her eyebrows. That sentence was a little bit too complex for her to understand.

Neeki must have realized that because she immediately corrected herself. _“This is making me tired.”_

 _“Oh,”_ Kyoko nodded. _“We can stop.”_

 

* * *

****

**19.**

    _“Hello, Mrs. Sasagawa,”_ Neeki said as she lowered herself down from the ceiling of the dining room.

    Mrs. Sasagawa didn’t hear her, as Neeki had come to expect, and instead, she kept her eyes firmly on the mounds of paper scattered out in front of her.

    Neeki watched quietly as the older woman readjusted her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose and wrote something down with her pen.

    _“Thank you for letting me stay here.”_ Neeki spoke up, _“I know I kinda created a mess in your family and I feel like I’m freeloading here. Especially since you can’t even see me.”_

    Mrs. Sasagawa glanced up at the clock on the wall.

    _“I know you can’t hear me, and I know you probably won’t be able to understand me even if you did. I wouldn’t know what you were saying most of the time if it wasn’t for Kyoko always translating for me.”_

    The older woman moved her elbow onto the table and propped her head up on her knuckle.

    _“What I’m trying to say here is Thank you. I don’t really know how to repay you right now for providing me with a roof over my head and a sort of safety zone that I can hide away from the mess that is my life.”_

    …

    _“Kyoko’s a nice girl. She reminds me of my younger cousin Caroline.  I wish I could introduce them. I think they’d be great friends.”_

    …

    _“What would you do if you suddenly died and woke up in a foreign country where you didn’t know the language or culture really and the only person that could see you were a little kid?”_

    …

    _“Figured you wouldn’t really have an answer for that. I don’t have an answer to that myself and I’m the one who’s living through it.”_

    Mrs. Sasagawa arched her back and stretched out her arms as she yawned. And then she hunched back over to read her paperwork. Neeki watched her silently for a few more seconds.

Neeki sighed and tilted her head back.

    _“Good talk,”_ she said before floating back up to the attic.

 

* * *

****

**20.**

    Whenever Kyoko entered the room she always, always greeted her therapist with a quick: “Good Afternoon, Dr. Han!”

    Dr. Han glanced up from her clipboard and smiled, “Good afternoon Kyoko! You seem chipper today.”

    Kyoko nodded as her grin widened. “I got my math test back today! I only got two questions wrong!” she said proudly before plopping her bag down on the ground and nestling into one of the more comfier chairs in Dr. Han’s room.

    “That’s great! All of that hard work studying really paid off.” Dr. Han hummed as she sat down in the chair across from Kyoko. “Do you think you can keep it up?”

    “I hope so. I really don’t want to mess up in this class. It’s really hard but I’m studying with my friend Hana and she’s great at math so I think that’s helping.” Kyoko replied.

    Dr. Han smiled. “Wonderful! Are you still going to Hana’s house on Saturdays to study?”

    “Yeah, she’s really great. Hana’s mom makes us muffins and everything and we basically get all of our homework done in one go. And then we go play video games when we’re done.”

    “Good, good, good. Now, how’s Neeki?” Dr. Han asked.

    “Oh, she’s doing great. Neeki was able to move one of my pens a couple of centimeters! But then she ended up passing out after, which wasn’t so great.” Kyoko said, rubbing the back of her neck.

    Dr. Han clicked her tongue. “Tell Neeki that she needs to be more careful. It’s not healthy to overexert herself. Make sure she keeps the practice sessions short and to take plenty of breaks so as not to drain all of her energy.”

    Kyoko nodded resolutely, “I’ll be sure to tell her.”

    And Dr. Han simply smiled.

   **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Neeki and Kyoko are reading from in scene 16 is the Japanese translation of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.  
> Hello guys! I changed the summary of this fic because I’ve realised that this fic is taking a MUCH darker turn than I anticipated. My plan was to just have a lighthearted story about late 2010s memes making their way into the early 2000s through Neeki, but this story has taken a life of it’s own, and I think I’m going to be continuing with this more realistic angle.  
> Although that doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on the memes and vines angle. That’s definitely still going to be there.  
> I’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone who left a comment on my fic. Each and everyone of your reviews make me smile like crazy whenever I read them and I practically burst with joy whenever I get a notification telling me that someone liked my story enough to leave a comment.  
> A huge part of why I got this chapter done so quickly was because the comments I received on the last chapter, so if you guys want more chapters written up in a shorter amount of time, leaving a comment about what you thought of my fic is the best way to get me motivated to write.  
> I will see you all next time!  
> -thepuffinpuff

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading my WIP! This story is also posted on Fanfiction.net under the same username, thepuffinpuff, in case anyone likes that website better.
> 
> I am going to willingly admit that I’ve never once read the Katekyō Hitman Reborn! Manga's and have only seen the first episode of the anime. The utter lack of strong female representation and general diversity of the characters has just been a real turn off for me. However I am absolutely in love with the concepts and I devour Hitman Reborn fanfics like there’s no tomorrow. So all of my knowledge about cannon events is a mishmash of parts that I’ve pieced together from reading the fanfics and constant references to the fandom wiki. So if any of the characters don’t seem to be in character… it’s because of that.
> 
> I wish I could tell you that there will be a regular schedule for this story but so far this is the only chapter I have written of it and I feel that if I don’t start posting the chapters now I’ll never get around to doing it. 
> 
> That being said, comments are amazing motivators for me and if you are interested in seeing more of this story please please please leave a comment telling me what you liked or didn’t like. I thrive on feedback, and leaving a review is a surefire way to get me to write new chapters.  
> And now we come to the conclusion of a very lengthy Author’s Note (trust me, the Disclaimer makes this A/N way longer than it usually will be). Once again, thank you for reading my fic and hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Until next time!  
> -thepuffinpuff


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